Thor's Brother
by willshakespeare-immortalbard
Summary: *Sequel to Odin's Son* Thor mourns for Loki and tries to find out if he's alive, while on Midgard Loki tries to return home. No pairings, just friendship for everything. Rated K-plus. Please read/review.
1. Screaming

**A/N—First things first. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own **_**Thor**_**. That belongs to Marvel. **

**Note: I just want to thank everybody who reviewed **_**Odin's Son**_**, or put it or me on favorites/alerts. It really meant a lot. I loved writing **_**Odin's Son**_**, and it was a little rough completing it. But I had mentioned a sequel, and a sequel I'm going to deliver. So, to all my wonderful readers—A SEQUEL! Just another quick statement on this: it will change between Thor and Loki's POVs, because I just can't see it working any other way. **

**Summary: After Loki lets go, he falls to Midgard, where he tries to battle himself and find a way back to the brother he was so close to. Meanwhile, Thor mourns while on Asgard, and tries to find a way to discover if his brother is dead. Just friendship!**

**Please read/review!**

**willshakespeare-immortalbard **

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><p><strong>Thor's Brother<strong>

Thor cried himself to sleep.

The Midgard stars shimmered like fallen tears, and the black sea of the sky was filled with them, like dark eyes swimming with sorrow and loss.

"Thor?"

The door creaked open softly, and the blast of chill air swept through his dream of slipping fingers and brilliant supernovas, turning the stars below to jagged spears that reached up, ready to disintegrate the falling figure—

"Thor?"

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><p><em>The hands weren't strong enough to catch him as he fell to the floor. All they could do was slip the tangled blanket from his fallen form, pulling it away from the limbs that it entrapped.<em>

_"Do you want me to go get Mother?" _

_The fifteen-year-old's eyes were worried, the dark room enhancing the green, outlining the small red specks that appeared when emotion was strong. _

_"I—I think maybe you should."_

_"No."_

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><p>"Thor!"<p>

Someone tore his blanket off of him before smacking him roughly across the face. The voices in his Thor's head rose—

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><p><em>"You had a SON!"<em>

_"NO!"—_

"_Is there something wrong with me?"—_

"_I don't want to lose my brother..."_—

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><p>—and another cold wind woke him.<p>

Fandral froze in the action of reaching out to slap Thor again.

"Just go," Thor snapped, not letting Fandral speak.

"Are you going to scream like this every night?" Fandral asked, and despite Thor's obvious pain, there was amusement in his voice. "You're keeping most of us awake."

"No." He couldn't find it in him to say anything else. For every word he spoke, he heard that young voice in his ears, full of concern—

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><p>"<em>Can I help? Please?"<em>

_The blanket was wrapped around him, and Loki struggled to lift Thor to his feet and back into bed. _

"_What was your nightmare about?"_

"_Screams. It's always screaming..."_

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><p>"Just go."<p>

Fandral didn't argue. He put the blanket back on Thor's bed, leaving it crumpled and disregarded. The warmth that flooded the room when he closed the door behind him had never hurt before, but it hurt now, as he snatched the blanket from the bottom of the bed and buried his face in it, breathing sharply and painfully, hoping desperately that the nightmare would come back, because for the first time in his life he hadn't dreamed about the screams, and anything was better than the voices ringing in his head.

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><p>"<em>I love you, brother."<em>

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><p>"Loki..." he choked, and it almost would have been worth it to just scream.<p>

Thor cried himself back to sleep.


	2. Lightning and Thunder Tears

**A/N—Wow, I am so sorry for my long long absence. Time just sped up and I had writer's block and…yeah, I should just drop the excuses. Please forgive me. **

**Disclaimer: I. Don't. Own. **_**Thor**_** belongs to Marvel. **_**Not**_** to me. **

**A quick note on the story: I'm not really used to writing Loki, and I'm sort of trying to figure out how I want to portray him. So it may take a while for me to settle in to this. Also, this will probably be like the majority of _Odin's Son_...drabbles. :) **

**Thank you all so so much for all your kind reviews and alerts and faves. It means so much to me. I apologize again-I'm _so sorry_-for the long wait. I hope you like this!**

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><p>Loki landed in a crater.<p>

Shards of rock and sparks of ancient power bit at his fingertips, making the tops joints twitch against the cold, Midgardian ground. His insides were churning. He could feel the flush in his face and the chill in his bones.

"Thor?"

_"FATHER?" _

The stones beneath his feet shifted as he staggered, his legs shaking and his heart shuddering. Something jammed in his throat, and he couldn't breathe.

"Thor?"

Up in the sky above him, the stars popped and sparkled like swirling supernovas. The dark clouds throbbed like the heartbeat of the brother in Asgard. Flashes of lightning screamed across them, and the horrid crashing seemed ever so much louder from Midgard—he seemed ever so more vulnerable. He clapped his hands to his ears, wincing with every birght glow, closing his eyes against the glaring landscape of jagged ground and broken earth. He stumbled on uneven ground, and his ankle twisted beneath him as his foot slipped into the indentation of a boot.

"Thor?" He sounded like a lost kitten, the word almost literally a mew of distress. His knees shook as he bent, pressing his hand against the bootprint. It looked tiny…He missed the tinges of red in the corners of his vision that the fever normally gave him. The bright color had always reminded him of Thor.

"Th—" He couldn't do it.

Loki curled up on the ground and cried.

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><p>Thor stayed in his room the next morning, a crumpled piece of paper in his hand.<p>

_The wind ruffled the old paper, slapping it against the wall, half tearing it from its pinnings. Though not strong, the breeze tossed the fragile thing, revealing flashes of bright lines and shaky stick-like shapes. _

_ His eyes burned. He reached out for the paper, his fingers shaking as they stretched for the dear drawing—__**"You…me…"**_

"Loki."

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><p>Another blast of thunder and lightning lit up the ground, the rocky rupture of the crater, and the slim form in the center, shielding its head, shaking with horror and pain and tears.<p> 


	3. Black Hole Beside a Supernova

**A/N—I own nothing. _Thor_ belongs to Marvel, not to me. **

**Here's another chapter! I'd like to thank The Pearl Maiden, SketchbookPianist, the marvel tiger, The Phantom Dragon, and Tsukimine12 for their kind reviews and support! It means a lot to me, that everyone's still enjoying this less-than-polished sequel. :) Also, The Pearl Maiden drew my attention to Loki's weakness in the last chapter. I'd like to apologize: I have no idea why I did that, after working so hard to get Loki IC. It won't happen again. Let's call it a moment of childish-ness, shall we? Thanks so much EVERYONE! :D This is for you!**

**Please read/review! **

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><p>"I-I wish that I had told you."<p>

Father's face blurred, and Thor felt his breath hitch and catch in his chest, not even making it far enough to come out as a sob. Grief felt like a fever. He wondered if maybe it had been pain and sorrow that had so often brought the red of fever and Jotun blood into Loki's pale face and green eyes.

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><p><em>"Is there something wrong with me? Am I cursed? That he doesn't love me? Is there a reason?"<em>

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><p>"You should have." He took his father's sorry words and tore them to shreds. He wanted to see the same pain that had shimmered in Loki's eyes in his father's, just to teach him what it felt like to be so hurt, so alone. "You shouldn't have kept it a secret. It wouldn't have a made a difference."<p>

"It would have, Thor. Would Asgard have accepted a Jotun?"

"_YES_!" Thor yelled, anger making his stomach knot and the bread and cheese Volstagg had coerced into his system rise like bile in his mouth. "Yes! If you had loved him, even a little bit, they would have accepted him, no matter what he was. But you didn't."

Odin trembled as he rose. "I loved him."

The tears made his visage shaky, and everything wavered as Thor shook his head visciously, trying to find words cruel enough.

"I loved him. Just as much as I loved you."

"If you'd loved him that much you wouldn't have hidden it from him."

"Does it mean nothing that I hid it from you, Thor? Is the fact that I revealed it to neither of you a sign of my loving you more than he? When did I ever do anything that showed a preference?"

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><p><em>"He's always harsher on me than he is on you."<em>

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><p>"His whole life. He understood that you loved him, if at all, less than you loved me. And Asgard saw it, and they shunned him."<p>

"I tried to keep him safe, to keep him happy."

"How many times are you going to _lie_? How long are you going to be a hypocrite? How long are you going to make _him_ the one you were trying to benefit? Why do you even care what it looks like anymore?"He lost control. "Asgard doesn't care anymore. All they ever cared about was what you cared about, which was keeping Loki out of your hair and your heart. All they ever wanted from him was—"

Thor stopped. Words still ran about in his mind, bombarding the door, trying to get out. But they weren't doing any good.

To Thor, shaking and crying, hating everyone who had ever, _ever_ hurt Loki, the grief in his father's eyes was empty compared to the shining image of Loki's pain-filled gaze.

Like a black hole beside a supernova.


	4. Found

**A/N—I don't own this. _Thor _belongs to Marvel, not to me. **

**I'd like to give a HUGE thank you to everybody who's reviewed, favorited, or alerted this story, or who has put me on their favorites list or on author alert. It means the word to me, and I just can't thank you all enough for the time you take to read this and tell me what you think. So, this chapter is dedicated to each and every one of you. I hope it pleases!**

**Please read/review! **

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><p>The thunderstorm was grieving, splattering teardrops of rain against the car's windows, the mourning torrent forcing the windshield wipers to dash them away like a hand across a raw cheek. The wheels of the car stuck in the tearstain ruts, blowing up mud and filthy water on her window, tepid and disgusting. The lightning screamed out in grief, flash after flash, the rolling thunder the rumbling howl of a wounded creature.<p>

But she forged on, determined to follow the brilliant supernova. A rainbow shimmered in its slow eruption, she could _swear it_, and it seemed to linger in the air like a special promise just for her.

She could do this.

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><p>He was thankful for the rain. It hid the tearstains on his face—that horrid moment of weakness that had reminded him that he was only nineteen, only a child, and alone…all alone—and gave him a reason to scrub at his eyes and nose with childlike stubbornness. And he was thankful because it meant that somewhere up in Asgard, beyond the rainbow bridge that Thor had shattered and he had left behind, his brother grieved for him. Somewhere, one heart ached in rapport with his. Somewhere, one person missed him.<p>

Loki stumbled to his feet, fingers pressing briefly against the ground, where little slivers of Mjolnir's power still caressed the pads of his fingertips. A ragged cry escaped him as he staggered, reeling backward—_a sixteen-year-old boy whooping at a starry Midgard sky_—_a confused man roaring out a name_—_**"FATHER!"**_—tripping in footprints made so long ago, unconsciously mirroring the actions of a former self, of a brother.

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><p>The lanterns came out of nowhere.<p>

She screamed, swerving frantically to the right, tires squealing along with her in mingled panic and joy as, in a flash of events so recent yet so old, her headlights illuminated an unsteady figure, outlined in rain and lightning and thunder, searching the sky for a world that mortals couldn't see.

He'd come back.

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><p>Something slammed against him, throwing him forward in a burst of light that wasn't from candles, but from something that borrowed the colors of the rainbow bridge, shining them out in a bright glare.<p>

Midgard went dark.

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><p>She slipped in the mud, tripping in deep footprints too big for her tiny shoes. Her flashlight scanned the ground, sweeping across it multiple times in search of the large, bulky figure. It took five goes to notice the slim, prone body of whoever she had hit, and she was almost too disappointed to care that she'd hit two people in a little over two days. But she moved forward, the flashlight shaking in her hand.<p>

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><p>"Are you alive?"<p>

A worried, female voice, and a bright, bright light, smaller than the lanterns that had run him over, but the same rainbow tint.

"Excuse me?" Hands pulled him upwards, and someone grunted with exertion. His feet scrabbled for a hold on the wet ground, and he finally managed to slip one foot into the imprint of a large boot. It gave him a grip, and he and the hands hoisted him to his feet. A petite woman released him the moment he was up, and he swayed for a second before turning to face her, before seeing a face he'd seen before.

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><p>Ice cold power made the man's sword hilt burn, and for an instant ice shimmered over armor, crystallizing, clouding over red-edged eyes. Heimdall knew the trickle of magic—he'd felt it so many times in the passing figure that had so often slipped by on the way to perch in the Yggdrasil. He spun towards the palace, for the first time leaving Midgard unwatched, the woman Thor loved abandoned.<p>

Loki was alive. Jane Foster had found him.


End file.
